No matter how you go mobile, you can meet your user’s needs. Recommendations based on location are plentiful, particularly on native apps. But don’t fret, agencies with mobile websites: you can also get in the location customization game.

Geolocation is a W3C scripting API that can be used with JavaScript in Web browsers. In the past, geolocation could only be done in native apps through a mobile programming API. With the Geolocation API, a mobile web app can request a user’s location.

There are numerous ways federal agencies could use this API. For example, the National Park Service (NPS)’s FindYourPark.com provides customized recommendations based on a user’s location. As noted in a previous DigitalGov article, NPS metadata from NPS.gov is pulled over to the FindYourPark website, including information about Centennial Rvents and the maps for the find feature.

Geolocation is not part of W3C HTML5 or the WHATWG HTML. However, W3C has published specifications to standardize this API to retrieve the geographical location information for a client-side device.